Well, I wasn't just kind of standing in a queue at McDonald's and someone sat down and said, 'You're the director of a $100 million Hollywood movie.' I've been working in commercials for ten years.
Tears will not fill your stomach; Tears will not bring kindness. If you have time to shed tears, laugh; someone will be willing to look at a hearty smile more then a tear soaked sponge.
I think there are people, and I do not mean this to be disparaging, there are people like Jay Mohr and Jeremy Piven where they just give you that vibe, 'This guy's going to play someone a little venal.'
I could be ordering ham at the deli, and someone will turn around and look at me and kind of stare. They'll just look at me like, 'I know I know your voice, and I know I know your face.'
In the end, a lack of compatibility is what ruins relationships. You can't force someone to be an eagle when they are a duck. Nobody wants to fly solo. Dreams were meant to be shared together.
True saddness is when someone still thinks your the same person after all these years. They brand you because of their own ego, fear and lack of spirituality. What's sadder is when they are Christian.
I have never been able to read Agatha Christie - the pleasure is purely in the puzzle, and the reader is toyed with by someone who didn't decide herself who the killer was until the end of the writing.
I hate the idea of getting in a building that someone else has designed and having to do something to it yourself to sort of dress it up - it's like using presets in your tracks.
I will do almost anything for the sake of a joke or for the sake of someone's real belief in something to help tell a story. I will not do something shocking for the sake of being nasty. If it's not hurting anyone's feelings, I'm in on the joke.
How you look is part of what acting is, but the way I look at it, every actor is a character actor. Someone once told me at a casting, 'You're a character actor in a leading man's body,' and I can live with that.
Everyone has been in a social situation where you say something and it goes unnoticed, then someone else says the same thing and everyone laughs a lot. You learn how to be more creative and whacky and amusing.
Integration is a man's ability to want to move in there by himself. If someone wants to live in a white neighborhood and he is black, that is his choice. It should be his rights. It is not because white people will not allow him.
I long for some connection, to the real and those who love them, and hope that my fiction can reach beyond the veil, that I might touch someone and make them feel something…or something.
Let us agree here today to adopt among ourselves a simple and unwritten rule. We will not rise to criticize someone else's idea unless we are prepared to offer an alternative idea of our own.
When I'm writing fiction, I'm sort of interested by the fact that somehow or other I can have the feeling of actually seeing things through someone else's eyes.
I'm not someone who can lie on a beach and do nothing. I am not sure what you are supposed to do, so I get bored. I prefer to have a purpose, such as going to Alaska to see orca whales.
When you become fluent with language, it means you can write an entry in your journal or tell a joke to someone or write a letter to a friend. And it's similar with new technologies.
I don't doubt for a second that Neil Armstrong's spirit is still with us: that unique blend of optimism, humility and the utter confidence that when the world needs someone to do the really big stuff, you need an American.
You could call me on the phone and say, 'Someone blew up your entire house, Mike.' If it's not a person involved, I would sort of blink, whatever. That's all replaceable, right?
Someone told me that they didn't want to take a flu shot because they didn't want to put a foreign substance in their body. What do they think they do at dinner every night?
I've learned some quick tricks about how to fix my hair so I can dash somewhere unexpected and still be O.K. when someone stops me to take a picture.
